Ben McDaniels, the younger brother of former Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels, is now an offensive assistant coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Ben McDaniels was on the Broncos’ coaching staff in 2009 as an offensive assistant and in 2010 as Tim Tebow’s first quarterbacks coach.

Ben’s Bucs will travel to Denver this weekend for a game against the Broncos at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. I know people around here don’t care much for Ben’s older brother, but Ben is a solid guy.

I remember Chris Simms, a veteran Broncos backup QB during the McDaniels’ years, was impressed with how well prepared Ben McDaniels was as a quarterbacks coach.

Chris Simms, the Broncos’ back up quarterback to Kyle Orton during the 2009 season, was acquitted by a New York jury today of driving while under the influence of marijuana.

Simms was represented by Denver attorney Harvey Steinberg, who spoke to The Denver Post from New York just before boarding a flight home.

“He should never have been charged,” Steinberg said. “There was no evidence. It took the jury less than an hour after three days of trial to acquit him. It’s unfortunate his reputation was besmirched by the fact there was even this allegation.'”

Simms was arrested at a checkpoint on July 1, 2010 while driving an SUV with his pregnant wife and friend Charlie Granatell. The arresting officer noted Simms took an alcohol breathalyzer that registed no reading but arrested the quarterback because of the smell of marijuana from the car. During trial testimony, Granatell said he was the only person who was smoking marijuana.

Simms, 30, is the son of CBS NFL color commentator and former New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms, who shredded the Broncos for 22 of 25 passing druing a 39-20 victory in Super Bowl XXI. It was the first of John Elway’s five Super Bowl appearances.

Steinberg has represented many Denver professional sports stars over the years and has won acquittals or ”slap-on-the-wrist” pleas in most of them.

There still isn’t much history on Josh McDaniels as the Broncos’ head coach but we’ll go with what we’ve got.

Last offseason, McDaniels revealed on June 13, the second-to-last day of the offseason, that Kyle Orton had beaten out Chris Simms for the starting quarterback position that had been vacant since the trade of Jay Cutler.

McDaniels said he wanted his team to know its offensive leader heading into training camp. Even after Orton threw three interceptions in his first three possessions of the Broncos’ first preseason game at San Francisco, and Simms played brilliantly in the second half of that game, McDaniels stuck by his decision.

If McDaniels follows the same pattern this year, we can expect a starting quarterback announcement on June 12, the second-to-last-day of this year’s offseason.

However, the quarterback situation has changed. Considerably. Unlike last year, Orton is the incumbent and has been practicing with the first-team offense throughout the offseason.

Also unlike last year, McDaniels has already sent the message that he doesn’t think Orton is his quarterback for the long-term. That message was clear when he acquired Brady Quinn in a trade from the Cleveland Browns and selected Tim Tebow with the No. 25 overall pick in the NFL Draft.

As for 2010, Tebow appears a long way from starting the regular-season opener, Sept. 12 at Jacksonville. That leaves Orton and Quinn. Orton is in the last year of his contract. Is he in his last year as the Broncos’ starting quarterback? Quinn has two years left on his contract. Could he be in his first, and last, year as the Broncos’ starting quarterback, with the Broncos grooming Tebow to take full control in 2011?

Because there’s far more intrique in the Orton-Quinn-Tebow situation this year than Orton-Simms last year, McDaniels may opt to keep the quarterback competition open beyond the mandatory minicamp June 11-13. Check back June 12.

I don’t want to say the Denver media has come along way with their local quarterbacks since the days of Jake Plummer and Jay Cutler, but photographers and reporters just met Brady Quinn.

The Denver Post’s APSE-award winning reporter Lindsay Jones was about to ask the first question when Quinn asked that she stop. Quinn wanted everyone to introduce themselves before asking their questions. He wanted to put some names to faces.

Plummer and Cutler were good guys in one-on-one settings. I admired Plummer for seemingly going out of his way to not be friendly with the press, which endeared him to his no-talk-to-the-media offensive linemen. And it was Plummer who broke in Cutler. Those two often bristled in group settings.

Last year’s group of Kyle Orton and Chris Simms were extremely accommodating. Simms is as good as it gets as a guy, but it seems Quinn is off to a good start in replacing him. Perhaps there’s some Cleveland media people who got sideways with Quinn but he’s made a favorable first impression here.

He says his injured foot has healed, by the way. Seven-step drops, plant, throw, no pain. No problem.

Chris Simms came a long way back from nearly dying. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

As we say goodbye to Chris Simms, let us remember not only his two abbreviated performances for the Broncos in 2009 but that he almost pulled off one of the NFL’s all-time best comebacks.

Simms has always lived beneath enormous expectations, first as a talented son of long-time NFL quarterback Phil Simms, who won a Super Bowl for the New York Giants before becoming the league’s No. 1 television analyst; secondly as a highly touted recruit to the University of Texas, and finally as a third-round draft pick of the Tampa Bay Bucs.

Simms broke through in 2005, leading the Bucs to the playoffs, and coming within with a bobbled catch of becoming a postseason hero. But early in 2006, Simms suffered a ruptured spleen while taking a hit in the season’s third game. He nearly died, then nearly didn’t recover well enough from complications to again play in the NFL.

But Simms did make it back and a little more than three years after his harrowing injury, he started an NFL game for the Broncos. He got a quick hook from that start against the San Diego Chargers and never saw the field again. Simms was released Monday, a day after the Broncos acquired Brady Quinn to become Kyle Orton’s new backup.

Here’s hoping Washington coach Mike Shanahan — who has always spoken highly of Simms’ talented arm — and offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan — one of Simms’ closest friends from their college days — gives the lefty one more chance.

If not, Simms can at least be comforted knowing he took it as far as he could. Just because an inspiring story doesn’t have a Hollywood ending doesn’t mean it’s not inspiring.

Nicki Jhabvala is a Broncos beat writer for The Denver Post. She was previously the digital news editor for sports. Before arriving in Denver, she spent five years at Sports Illustrated working primarily as its online NBA editor. She also spent two years as a home page editor at the New York Times.